This year I found I had a lot of wine, I have a lot of great friends who don't use their plentiful fruit. I'm grateful for that. I wanted to do something different with some of the fruit.

I was making hard cider and thought, why can't I make cider out of all these fruits? I made all my wines and when it came to bottling I put half in traditional bottles with corks then took the other half and made cider (sparkling wine?) out of it.

I'm not sure what the different between cider and sparkling wine is. I make some of my apple cider flat and some sparkling but I guess its all cider. Either way the real trouble I had was finding out the amount of sugar to add to the wine before putting in beer bottles so it would carbonate.

Here is the magical answer I came up with 0.8oz of sugar (weight) to each gallon of wine. I really only used 0.6oz because I was afraid of over carbonation and blowing up my beer bottles. None so far and it could use a tad more carbonation. So far it has all been great except for the peach. The peach is terrible, if anyone has a good peach wine recipe please share it.

Otherwise here are all the flavors I made and mixed a few. Just some ideas for anyone who wants to try something different than traditional wine. Now you can have some "champagne" for that special occasion!

Well sparkling wines are wines with significant carbon dioxide levels in them. They are usually a white or rose wine, sometimes a red such as Italian Brachetto. This level of carbon dioxide happens numberous ways. Natural fermentation in the bottles, in a large tank that is then put under pressure, or injection of carbon dioxide. I prefere natural.

Basically it's another name for champagne. For sparkling wines champagne bottles are a must, they are thicker and can tolerate the extreme pressures. Priming sugar added at bottling feeds the yeast still alive in the bottle creating the carbonation. Beer and wine brewing over weeks to months the yeast will convert the sugar to carbon dioxide, so if after a week the bottles ain't burst they may in a month or so.

Cider is none alcoholic made from crushed fruit and sometimes mulled with spices....However Cyder is crushed then fermented between 40-60 degrees F. The key to this is a slower fermentation leading to less of a loss of aromas. It has slight carbonation, though at bottling there is sometimes sugar added to increase the end result. Sometimes they are cloudy, sometimes they are crystal clear, sometimes they require extra rackings and may be aged up to 3 years.

your .8 oz is 1 tenth of a cup per bottle, to put this into perspective, 5 gallons is 80 cups, 1 cup is 8 ounces, 80 cups times 8 is, 640 fluid ounces....we can now calculate beer bottles, a maximum of 53 bottles....so let's say you did a whole 5 gallon batch adding only 1/10th of a cup per gallon, 1/2 a cup.....about 4 ounces of primer....divided by 53 works out to 2.1 grams per bottle....

with 12.2 ounces of honey, if you did it my way, your adding roughly 6.5 grams to each bottle, but beer bottles are not suited to this. This will definetly explode the bottles.

P.S. WARNING: point cork away from people and breakables you get a loud pop and a good gush at room temp my way, and that cork does fly hard enough to give a black eye. Well, she said she just bruised easily, either way the cork tried to kill her! Poster not liable for damage to people or property.

Cider is none alcoholic made from crushed fruit and sometimes mulled with spices....However Cyder is crushed then fermented between 40-60 degrees F. The key to this is a slower fermentation leading to less of a loss of aromas. It has slight carbonation, though at bottling there is sometimes sugar added to increase the end result.

So what I'm trying to make isn't Sparkling Wine or Champagne. Its Cider but not necessarily apple cider. It doesn't have nearly the carbonation of champagne. Just like your calculations show I only had a CO2 volume of 2.1. Normal pry on cap bottles will reach their maximum around 3 CO2 volumes. **Warning all bottles aren't created equal, a Bud Light bottle is thinner than a Samual Adams bottle. Pressurize at your own risk** All my bottles are reused commercial some more than 20 times so far.

Yes you can't make Sparkling wines/Champagne with 4 or 5 CO2 volumes in beer bottles, but you can make a carbonated cider that tastes good in beer bottles. Its just limited to the same carbonation level of beers.

If you search for CO2 volume calculators you can calculate on your own. It looks like 0-1.1oz of table sugar (cane sugar) per gallon will result in 0-3 CO2 volumes. So I would say 0.6 to 0.8oz sugar per gallon is a safe level. These calculations are all based on room temperature.

Grendal thanks for making me do some calculations instead of just throwing my finger in the wind and saying 0.6oz. Also I happened to have used the Jack Keller first recipe. So I will be trying the second or third next time around. Maybe I will make all 3 next year. The peaches might have just been off or something else this year.

So what I'm trying to make isn't Sparkling Wine or Champagne. Its Cider but not necessarily apple cider. It doesn't have nearly the carbonation of champagne. Just like your calculations show I only had a CO2 volume of 2.1. Normal pry on cap bottles will reach their maximum around 3 CO2 volumes. **Warning all bottles aren't created equal, a Bud Light bottle is thinner than a Samual Adams bottle. Pressurize at your own risk** All my bottles are reused commercial some more than 20 times so far.

Yes you can't make Sparkling wines/Champagne with 4 or 5 CO2 volumes in beer bottles, but you can make a carbonated cider that tastes good in beer bottles. Its just limited to the same carbonation level of beers.

If you search for CO2 volume calculators you can calculate on your own. It looks like 0-1.1oz of table sugar (cane sugar) per gallon will result in 0-3 CO2 volumes. So I would say 0.6 to 0.8oz sugar per gallon is a safe level. These calculations are all based on room temperature.

Grendal thanks for making me do some calculations instead of just throwing my finger in the wind and saying 0.6oz. Also I happened to have used the Jack Keller first recipe. So I will be trying the second or third next time around. Maybe I will make all 3 next year. The peaches might have just been off or something else this year.

Well for safety sake cause the bottles are heavily reused, bottles can be dinged and knocked around and I would think in theory this can cause micro fractures that grow over time leading to structural failure so reusing bottles I wouldn't go over 2.5 Co2 volume. For a 5 gallon batch, I'd do 3.5 ounces to get roughly 2.1 Co2 Volume. 3.5 ounces is less then a Co2 volume of 2 might be 1.5 which is why it seemed flat. Yes it's a safe level but if you want beer bottles look for bottles specifically for fruit lambics and german wheat beers, those can handle up to a Co2 volume of 4. Which is well bubbly.

You are right on bottles not being created equal. I got a handy little chart from some website ages ago that I copied down.